You don't need to be a genius to conclude that the government has made a mess of the migration program.

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You might however care to reflect that everyone else's contribution has been equally dismal.

Parliamentarians of all persuasions, the media and us. We've all dropped the ball.

Perhaps, no in fact, one of the best contributions recently has been from Peter Malinauskas the Premier in my state of South Australia.

He took the opportunity to remind us of a Banjo Patterson piece. The following gives you the gist:

"Tis our duty, when he's foreign, and his English very young,

To find out and take him somewhere where he'll hear his native tongue.

To give him our spare moment, and our pleasure to defer-

He'll be a father of Australians, as our foreign fathers were!"

At least one leader gets the rich historical place of migration to Australia.

There would be plenty of Australians whose grandparents like mine participated in groups like the Good Neighbour Council designed to make new migrants settle in more easily.

It may be that back in the '40s, '50s and '60s migrants were more obvious.

Arthur Caldwell, the father of our migration system was vehemently opposed to "aliens". Think non-English speaking wherever you were born.

An Indonesian woman whose husband was working in Australia for Dutch intelligence services to our benefit was widowed. Caldwell tried to remove the family.

Her landlord Mr O'Keefe married her to try to help her stay. Australians were on her side. It went to the High Court and she won.

The first chip in the White Australia Policy. It was a big issue.

Now, instead of standing out, migrants from all over the world are hiding in plain sight. Perhaps that's why we pay so little attention to the make-up of the program that shapes our future.

We run the risk of taking migrants for granted. That would be a big mistake.

So how did we end up so ill-informed about the program that makes us who we are?

If the subject was nuclear power or the Northern Prawn Fishery we could expect a limited and specialised interest. But it is not. It will shape who we become. It is our beating heart.

The major parties and assorted other members of Parliament seem to be just yelling across the town square at each other and sometimes at us.

Pauline Hanson is as usual complaining and telling Australians she knows what they think. She seems to have missed the bit........

© Canberra Times